


Write Drunk, Edit... Sober?

by nihilBliss



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Flash Fiction, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prompt Fill, Tags May Change, Write Drunk Edit Sober, timed writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-05 14:54:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12192093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihilBliss/pseuds/nihilBliss
Summary: What do you get when you mix a prompt, a 15 minute timer, and cheap booze? Flash fiction. Content is posted as-is from the end of the timer. Tags updated as I go.  Chapter title is the prompt. New blurbs every Friday.





	1. I didn’t know my ex was even invited to the party. Things didn’t get too awkward until the host insisted we meet each other.

I didn’t know my ex was even invited to the party. Things didn’t get too awkward until the host insisted we meet each other.  
“Oh come now, dear, you’ve been alone so long,” she said. Clara always threw the best parties in Paris, at least as far as the expat community was concerned. “Your wife’s been worm food for near on six years, and I haven’t seen you so much as make a new friend, bless your heart!”  
I shrugged and deflected her suggestion. Even in gay Paris, it was very hard to be, well, gay. My wife was gone for six years, yes, but that hardly meant I’d been alone. First there was Jacques, a sailor from Marseilles. Then Pierre, from Nice. After another Frenchman or three, I developed more diverse tastes in men, dating within expat and migrant communities all around town. That’s where I met Louis last year.  
Louis was the son of a rich merchant – I never much cared for the details, and neither did he. We met at a market on the south end of the city, nearly coming to blows over a wheel of fine Parmesan recently carted in from Italy. That tumult should have forewarned our falling out, both of us stubborn as goats and full of passion, but if I’m honest, that’s what made him so compelling in the first place.  
“Oh don’t be such a fool,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll find each other’s company delightful. You’ve got a lot in common, you know.” She flicked my nose with a finger, leading me to sniffle. “He’s even as stubborn as you.”  
Oh, Clara, how little you knew.  
I tried to protest again, checking my watch – what’s one party to keeping one’s dignity?  
“Come now, Arnold, I insist,” she said, linking her arm with mine, tender in appearance but in truth as firm and final as a stockade. I sighed, defeated and allowed her to lead the way, preparing a mawkish smile for my encounter. We strode through the crowd, and I saw him in silhouette, pouring a glass of white wine.  
The very bottle I’d bought as a hostess gift, naturally.  
“Louis!” she said, waving her hand. “Louis, there you are! I’ve someone I’d like you to meet. I think you’d get along famously.”  
“Clara, what a lovely party you’re…” he stopped halfway through his sentence, and his expression dropped.  
“Louis, this is my friend Arnold, he’s… Louis, what’s wrong?” Clara asked, halfway through a sentence before she so much as bothered to read his body language. I swear, for the most accomplished American hostess in Paris, she was so sure of herself. She never looked before she leaped.  
“Nothing!” he exclaimed. “Nothing at all! Arnold, was it?”  
“Yes, and you’re, was it, Louis?”  
“Yes, that’s right,” he said, offering his hand to me. There was a ring on his finger I didn’t recall him wearing, though it had been some time since I’d seen him. We shook hands, and I remembered the feel of the gold against my hand.  
“Louis, was it?” I asked, sweetly. “May I inquire as to how you came to possess that ring?”  
“This one?” He looked at his hand, innocently. “Well, I got it from a shop down in Marseille, a secondhand seller, I believe.”  
“That’s strange,” I said. “I clearly recall seeing it six years ago.” Clara’s face blanched.  
“Oh?”  
“Yes, I’m quite sure it was on the finger of my wife,” I said. “That was the day we buried her.”


	2. Once again, I had brought a sword to a gunfight.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secret agent lass killin' Nazis by pretending to be one. Good times.

Once again, I had brought a sword to a gunfight. Nobody expects that. Gives a girl the upper hand in a fight, and certainly, it’s more useful in close-quarters, like the sort you see in the belly of a ship. At least, if you know what you’re doing.  
I had the kommandant pinned and pin-pricked against the cold iron wall of the u-boat, fear in his eyes, red light glinting off the skull on his cap.  
“You can’t kill me before I kill him,” I said. “And I know how disappointed your leader would be if Herr Kursch did not arrive in port on time.”  
Reinholdt Kursch held his hands above his head, not quick enough to pull his pistol before I had him where I wanted him.  
“Lower your firearms, men,” he said. The soldiers obeyed, like good dogs ought. “What do you want, Fraulein Schaftsbruk?”  
I smirked. He still didn’t suspect.  
“My request is simple,” I said, eyeing the soldiers surrounding us. “We continue along our projected course until we reach the port. You will not make any indication that my presence is any manner of irregular or unexpected in the mean time. No unusual communications. No whisper of irregularity. In the mean time, I will stay with the captain at all times. Your pistol, Kommandant?”  
He handed me his well-oiled luger, I slipped it into my pocket.  
“We will discuss what is to happen when we make port exactly two hours in advance. That is all you need to know for now,” I said. “You would not be so foolish as to defy the orders of a Thule agent, would you?”  
Kursch’s eyes widened at the words.  
“You… Stand down, men!” he shouted, sweat beading above his piggy Kraut eyes. “All of you, stand down! This is a misunderstanding! I repeat, stand down, and return to your posts!” The men wavered, unaccustomed to seeing their captain showing anything but perfect military composure.  
“You should listen to your Kommandant, friends,” I said in a low, certain voice. “It would be unbecoming to do otherwise.”  
The soldiers holstered their guns and wavered.  
“Now!” barked Kursch. They jumped and scampered. It felt good to make that bastard crack.


	3. For what possible reason was there a cell phone ringing on the kitchen counter?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haunted cell phone. Vengeful spirit. 'Nuff said.

For what possible reason was there a cell phone ringing on the kitchen counter? Mine was dead, and I had no intention of reviving it. Mark’s went into the pond that morning. Alice put hers through the window on the fifth call. Laura took an ax to hers on the eighth. They say those who snap later snap harder.  
They all looked at me.  
“Isn’t that yours, Donna?” asked Mark.  
The asshole knew it wasn’t. It wasn’t any of ours. It was an old flip phone, one of those skinny ones that looked like it’d snap when you looked at it too hard. There was no case on it, and the chromed red surface was scuffed to hell and back.  
We all knew whose phone it was. We all knew the “Too drunk to fuck” sticker that adorned the back, though we hadn’t bothered to lift it. We all knew the charm that hung from it, a little black kitten that looked so sweet until you touched what remained of its fake fur, then inevitably recoiled in disgust. We all knew the tinny cable-ad ringtone snippet of some popular rap song from fifteen years ago. And we knew where we’d snapped it, somewhere out in the bog three states away. We remembered the moment we’d thrown it into the kiln at our old high school.  
So for what possible reason was it fucking here, in the Colorado woods, on the kitchen counter, exactly ten years after we killed the motherfucker who owned it?  
I picked it up and listened.  
“DONNA,” the voice croaked from the other end. I dropped it on the floor.  
“DONNA.” Again the awful rasp came, this time from the speaker. Mark staggered backwards, as if it might jump and bite him. Alice buried her face in Laura’s shoulder. I picked it up.  
“Who is this?” I asked, hand trembling.  
“DONNA. HOW COULD YOU FORGET MY VOICE, PUPPET?”  
“You must be making a mistake,” I said. “Nobody speaks like that.”  
“IT’S A LITTLE HARD TO ENUNCIATE WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE A THROAT, PUPPET,” the voice said.  
Sherlock Holmes once said that once you eliminate whatever’s impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.


End file.
